Jeffrey Lipton stands in front of a crowd of about 40 beside his 22 ceramic pieces as classmates, professors, and local professionals fire questions at him.
They ask about form and function, they tell him his presentation, which sits on pine shelves in the middle of the gallery, is too heavy. The questions continue to be swiftly directed at him but Lipton doesn’t break a sweat.
This man is an art student.
Although most of a public speaking class would shiver at the thought of being put on the spot about their own creations, that is the point of this type of critique.
The 30-minute critique session, a degree requirement, calls for a lot of poise and represents one aspect of the anticipated art career that Lipton and his classmates must master – and it’s no easy task.
The format of the critique this year is modeled after common graduate school practice, the “cold critique,” in which the artist does not give an opening statement describing or defending his or her work.
Instead, classmates and others act as critics and prod and examine work from their perspective as viewers.
The artists are asked questions about their choice of subject and thought process. It’s not uncommon that more specific “why did you do that?” wonderings are verbalized.
Fifteen graduating art majors are participating in the show, whose name cleverly implies both process and product: PRODUCE.
The four-plus years of these contemporary artists’ early careers cover the walls of the Gorham Art Gallery, and are evidence of the processes they’ve learned over those years.
Following tradition, this year’s show sends off the art department graduates, and their final critiques are open to the public for the next two Thursdays from 4:30-7 p.m.
For the first round of critiques, a guest panel was also invited to criticize the student’s work alongside all the professors in the department.
This panel included Bruce Brown, curator Emeritus of the Center for Maine Contemporary Arts; Meggan L. Gould, a visiting professor of art at Bowdoin, and Sage Lewis, the curatorial coordinator of the Portland Museum of Art.
Next week the Free Press will look into five more of the graduating seniors’ work and critiques.
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While he was probed for his interpretation of portraits taken inside medical institutions, the panel saw stronger, more subtle messages in anonymous factory-like buildings painted with red crosses in two of his four paintings. Large red industrial cross sculptures loomed over the paintings. Viewers grappled with his mixing media, subject, and style, and Cook defended his notion that “Everybody Hurts” dealt with the impressions and elements important to each variation.
Her intention was for the viewer to be disoriented before a moment of recognition, but many of the critics focused on finding the cracks and imperfections, the personality of each sign. Her studio practice probed into full understanding of the capabilities of her and her camera, something that will come in handy as she pursues a graduate degree in photojournalism at Syracuse next year. |
Critics voiced the need to move the paintings around, because they covered each other, to reveal every part of the extensive, yearlong study of fruit on fabric. His studies were hung at eye-level to be pawed through, urging the viewer to look at his process – his main concern, and what he deemed the point of his body of work.
A readable image of the silent joy of pregnancy, intimacy, and affection in the form of the pregnant couple holding each other, and looking forward in the same direction, was disrupted when Sage Lewis of the Portland Museum of Art asked, “does anybody else see this as something we shouldn’t be seeing?” suggesting that the intimate moment was indicative of the closeness involved in the sexuality of creation. McCannell was asked what he meant to say about the obvious heterosexual message apparent in the happily wedded couple that he first described as universal, and then pointed at the womb as a universal spot as well. |
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Ryland Cook incorporated painting and relief sculpture into a wall-installation that took a creepy look into the world of medicine, according to most viewers, although he began by mentioning a viewer who told him how hopeful his images were to her. 
Photographer Mary Jones showcased a wall of 128 close-up photos of traffic signs, organized like wallpaper, adjacent to three large, framed, “portraits” of signs. 
Senior Donald S. Zaluski and his stacks of various-sized still-life paintings, stacked on the floor and leaning unhung against the wall, were first to the chopping block. 
Printmaker Gavin McCannell stood before a dark green wall as a silhouette in his likeness held a pregnant woman, representing his wife. Thousands of tiny printed birds were cut individually and made up the two figures, resulting in the title, Birds of a Feather.